Bits and Bobs: Semper Fi AU
by San Antonio Rose
Summary: A collection of one-shot timestamps and missing scenes from "Semper Fi," featuring hurt!Marine!Dean and awesome-bro!Sam. (Background Sam/Jess)
1. A Beary Merry Christmas

A/N: These "Bits and Bobs" collections will contain most of my one-shot comment-fics from various LJ comms. This particular collection, however, will house timestamps and missing scenes from "Semper Fi," my AU in which Dean is a Marine and was severely injured in Iraq. Enjoy!

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><p>A Beary Merry Christmas<p>

December 23, 2005

Dean had rather overdone at the Christmas party, Carmen whispered to Sam after wheeling him back into the apartment, and she'd had to give him a fentanyl patch to help bring the pain under control. She _had_ made sure he didn't drink, so if he was loopy at all, it was purely the fentanyl. Sam thanked her for the update and for taking care of Dean, and she left.

Jess was already in bed, but Dean wasn't in the living room when Sam turned around. He was just about to wonder whether Castiel had made off with him (for no reason Sam could fathom) when he heard Dean's voice coming from his bedroom—quiet, but still audible to a hunter, and slurred and somewhat off-key:

_Alec, the six-gun cowbear,  
><em>_Had a very shiny gun..._

Sam clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the laughter that threatened to bubble out. Even knowing Dean was stoned, and for good reason, the image of his brother—_his brother the Marine_—crooning a Christmas carol to his _teddy bear_ was just too funny for words. It got funnier still when he got to Dean's doorway and found Dean, now humming, dancing Alec around on the bed with his good hand.

Dean finally noticed Sam standing there, and his head wobbled a little as he turned to look at him. "Oh, hey, Sammy." And he waved Alec's paw.

Sam cleared his throat, but he couldn't wipe the grin off his face. "Hey, Dean. What are you up to?"

"'Mmmmm talkin' to Alec. 'S awesome."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Alec's m'friend—him'n Cas... 'member Cas?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"All... all m'other friends're... still'n Iraq. But Alec's here. Alec's awesome."

"How was the party?"

Dean made an uncertain noise. "Carmen... she pulls stuff outta m'face. Dunno... dunno if I like that. But yeah, it was... kinda fun." He fiddled with Alec for a moment. "Woulda been better if you'n'Jess'd come. 'N Cas. 'N Alec."

"Missed you, too," Sam whispered without meaning to.

Dean patted Alec's head with his stump. "Y'know... how long's been since I had my own bear?"

Sam tried to remember Dean ever owning anything but GI Joes. "No."

"The fire." Dean sniffled.

Sam wasn't tempted to laugh anymore as he came into the room and knelt beside Dean's wheelchair, putting an arm around his shoulders.

"After... we... we couldn't afford a bear for each of us. So we shared."

"I'm sorry, Dean."

Dean made a negative noise. "Was sharin' with _you_, Sammy. Wasn't so bad 'cept when you di'n' wanna share. But... you were really little. You di'n' know."

"No. But I do now."

Dean turned a not-quite-tearful smile to Sam. "Love you, Sasquatch."

Sam pulled him into a hug and nearly cried himself when he felt Dean return the hug—teddy bear still in hand.

"You ready for bed?" he finally asked without letting go.

"Nn-mm. Gotta put my p'jamas on."

Sam huffed in amusement and did let go at that. "Want my help?"

Dean started to shake his head and then thought better of it. "Guess so. 'M sleepy. Damn fentanyl."

Sam chuckled and gently helped Dean change and get into bed. His leg had healed well enough that he could move around the room unassisted most days, but tonight he needed his little brother's steadying hand, and Sam was very happy to provide it.

And if Dean wondered in the morning who had tucked Alec under his left elbow, the knowing smile he got from Sam at breakfast meant he didn't need to ask.


	2. Phantoms

Phantoms

It was inevitable, Sam supposed. Now that Cas was no longer hanging around to keep the germs at bay, Dean was bound to catch something. They were just lucky it appeared to be a plain old garden-variety virus that would run its course in a matter of days and leave him not too much the worse for wear, too vanilla even to diagnose more precisely, and not something exotic like MRSA that would be hard to treat and could seriously hinder his ongoing recovery from the IED attack.

Unfortunately for Dean, the fever had gone on beyond zebra and was now pushing 104°. He wasn't hallucinating that Sam knew of, but he wasn't too with it, either, and sometimes his rambles got pretty funny, like the long one on _Star Trek_ vs. _Star Wars_. The fact that he appealed to Jess for backup, even though Jess had no preference for either one, only made Sam laugh more. So it wasn't too surprising when, in the course of watching TV in his bedroom, Dean tried to reach for the remote with his non-existent left hand and missed. Sam chuckled at Dean's confused frown. Then Dean tried again, more deliberately, and missed again. Looking deeply disturbed, he tried and failed a third time.

Sam started to laugh. Dean started to scream.

Jess was at Dean's side in a flash. "Dean? Dean, what is it? Talk to me."

Dean's eyes were fever-glazed and wild with terror. "I c-c-can't... it w-went through my hand... J-Jess? What... why can't I touch anything?" His voice rose hysterically. "What the hell kind of curse is this?"

Sam guffawed.

Jess spun and glared at him, furious. "Out."

"What? It's—"

"OUT!"

"Okay, fine..." Sam conceded and left the room, closing the door behind him as Jess murmured soothing words to Dean that Sam couldn't quite make out. And he stayed in the hall until she apparently got Dean calmed down and slipped quietly out of the room.

Her jaw clenched as soon as she saw him standing there. "It's _not funny_, Sam," she said quietly. "Phantom limb is a real phenomenon; the brain doesn't always remember that a limb is missing and sometimes reacts as if it's still there. He can probably still _feel_ that hand even on a good day—maybe it'll itch or hurt, maybe he thinks he's drumming his fingers on the table. It's disorienting enough _without_ the fever, when he's lucid enough to recognize that he can't touch things with that hand because it's gone and maybe even to laugh at himself for forgetting. Knowing the things you've hunted?" She shook her head. "He couldn't figure out if he was out of phase or a ghost or what. Your laughing at him won't help matters."

Sam blinked. "He seriously felt like the remote went _through_ his hand?"

"Seriously."

Sam tried to imagine what that would feel like and suddenly felt sick with guilt. "You're right. That isn't funny. Is... is he okay now?"

"Calmer. You can probably help him more than I can, though. You've known him longer. Sometimes massaging the stump helps, too, and I don't think he'd accept that from me."

Sam nodded. "Thanks for setting me straight."

She kissed his cheek and went on to the living room, leaving Sam to steel himself to go in and face Dean again.

Dean was perilously close to tears when Sam walked in. "M'hand won't work, Sammy," he sniffled, making Sam feel like even more of a heel. "Why won't m'hand work?"

Sam sat down on the edge of the bed, to Dean's left. He hated seeing his big brother like this. "It got infected when you were in Germany, remember? They had to cut it off."

Dean's forehead crinkled in a confused frown. "Sammy?"

"Does it hurt?"

Dean nodded. "Aches, kind of. I... I think I'm sick, Sam."

"Yeah. It'll be okay, though." Without really thinking, Sam laid a hand on Dean's arm, just above the stump, and began massaging the muscle with his thumb.

Dean made a funny high-pitched groaning noise in the back of his throat, and his eyes slid shut.

"Dean? Am I hurting you?"

Dean shook his head. "No, 's good, keep... _nnnngh_."

So Sam kept kneading, trying to ignore his dismay at the heat pouring from Dean's skin and the flush of his cheeks. And although he kept his voice low, Dean let loose with a string of profanity that left no doubt as to his having been in the Marines for two years before his injury, including some particularly colorful expressions in Arabic that he'd probably picked up from the interpreters. Sam knew those mainly from having made a few Arab-American friends at Stanford. There were one or two that he didn't recognize, though, and he assumed those must have been Kurdish.

He was absurdly glad that Jess wasn't in the room. She'd probably heard worse, but some old-fashioned part of his mind still wanted to keep her sheltered from things like rough language and the obscene wisecrack Dean was likely to make when Sam finished because he didn't think he could say what he really felt. _Perils of being a Winchester_, Sam thought with a fleeting grimace.

But the off-color joke never came. Instead, when Sam finished, Dean slumped against him and mumbled, "Y'r awesome, Sammy. Thanks."

"Want some ice cream?"

"'Kay. 'S hot in here, Sammy. 'M I sick? I think I'm sick."

"Yeah, Dean. You're sick. But we're here, me and Jess. We'll get you through this."

"'N Dad?"

Sam sighed. "I don't know where Dad is. He's back to not answering his phone."

Dean started sniffling again. "'S gonna get himself killed, Sammy... 's gonna get killed and we're not gonna know..."

Sam started rubbing Dean's shoulder. "Hey. Cas is still out there, right? Maybe Cas is looking after Dad." They hadn't heard from the angel in a couple of months, either, but the argument from silence worked both ways. Dean wasn't with it enough to realize it was a fallacy in either form.

And sure enough, Dean nodded. "Yeah. Maybe. Hope so. Don' want Dad to die."

"Ice cream?"

Dean nodded again.

Sam eased him back against the pillows that had been propping him up. "Okay. I'll be right back."

"Love you, Sammy," Dean murmured as his eyes slid shut again.

"Love you, too, Dean," Sam whispered back, running a hand through the hair that was finally starting to look more like his brother's usual style. Then he left the room quietly and hurried to the kitchen to fill a bowl with chocolate ice cream.

Somehow it didn't surprise him that by the time he got back, Dean was chatting quietly with someone who wasn't there, even tried to introduce Sam to the guy—a member of Dean's unit who'd been killed in Fallujah. The apartment was too well warded for it to be an actual ghost, so it had to be a hallucination. Sam alerted Jess once Dean finished his ice cream and fell asleep, and both of them took the next day off from work because they suspected—rightly—that the hallucinations would only get scarier as the fever dredged up memories of hunts gone awry and terrible moments from Iraq. It took both of them to still Dean's flailing limbs long enough to get him through ice baths, coax him into taking Tylenol, and keep him calm enough that he didn't wake up the whole building with his screams.

Finally, though, the fever broke, and Sam was beyond relieved to see his brother's eyes focus on him, sparkling with their normal intelligence and good humor.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean whispered with a tired smile.

"Hey," Sam whispered back. "Feeling better?"

Dean nodded. "Beat to hell, but at least I'm not burning up anymore."

Sam sighed. "That's a relief."

Dean started to reach for Sam with his left hand, then caught himself and patted Sam's arm with his right hand. "Thanks, dude. Guess I was pretty out of it for a while there."

"Is... does your hand..."

Dean looked down and moved his stump like he was turning the hand over. "Still kind of aches." Then he frowned. "You did something the other day... felt really good, whatever it was."

"Would you like me to..."

"If... yeah."

Sam gingerly wrapped his hand around the stump and began massaging gently, and Dean let out a groan of pure pleasure and began making the kinds of wisecracks that both disgusted and relieved Sam. That, more than anything, convinced him that Dean really was on the mend.

Maybe not every phantom could be dispatched with a salt and burn, but Sam felt better knowing that he could help Dean keep at least a few even of those at bay.


	3. On Whom His Favor Rests

A/N: Set about two months after the end of "Fides Quaerens Intellectus."

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><p>On Whom His Favor Rests<p>

"You're hot," said the muscle-bound blockhead who approached Lisa as she was on her way out of the gym shortly before Christmas.

"I'm also married," she shot back. _And six months pregnant, you creep_, she continued mentally, resting her left hand on her belly so that her ring showed.

"Ah, to the wrong man, baby," he replied, stepping into her personal space.

She backed away, turning to try to prevent his pursuit and keep heading toward the doors. "He's twice the man you are."

He laughed. "How would you know?"

A hand landed on her right shoulder from behind, startling her briefly, but to her relief, it was accompanied by Dean's voice, gruff with mingled concern and menace. "He botherin' you, sweetheart?"

"Yes, he is, honey," she informed him. Not that he wouldn't have been able to tell—that was probably why he'd come up behind her—but she needed to show Meathead that this was the aforementioned husband.

Meathead looked at Dean's hand and scoffed. "What kind of man wears his weddin' ring on his right hand?"

Dean put his stump on Lisa's left shoulder.

Meathead frowned. "What happened there?"

"I'm a Marine."

Meathead paled and fled.

Dean slid his arms forward and crossed them, embracing—and bracing—her as he gently kissed the back of her left ear.

She shivered and reached up to take his hand in her left. "Creep."

"You know his name?"

"Never seen him before."

"You got a key to this place, right?"

"Don't usually need it, but I have one."

"I'll see if Dad's up to checking the security footage tonight."

"Dean—"

"Lis, especially if he's a sex offender, I don't want him around you. And there's things out there that eat babies," he added softly into her ear.

She shivered harder. "_So_ did not need to know that."

Just then a security guard, an older man by the name of Frank, came running. "Mrs. Winchester! Are you all right?"

She pulled herself together and smiled. "Yes, thanks, Frank. I've been rescued." And she squeezed Dean's hand, which prompted him to tighten the hug briefly.

"I'm _so_ sorry that happened. We'll see that you're not bothered again."

"I appreciate that. Thank you."

Frank nodded, and Dean pulled her away, moving up to her right side and keeping his left arm around her shoulders all the way out to the car.

"Still going to send your dad?" she asked as he started the engine.

He frowned as he considered the question. "Y'know, maybe not. That Frank dude was carrying a taser, and something tells me he was just about to use it on that loser."

She chuckled and let it drop.

Two days later, Jess brought over a load of supplies for Christmas dinner and asked, "Dean, have you been terrorizing people lately?"

Dean blinked and looked genuinely confused. "No. Thought about it, but haven't. Why?"

"Guy came into the clinic this afternoon. I'm not even sure why he was there; he looked perfectly healthy, if a little under .500 in the brains to brawn ratio."

Lisa snorted at the description, but she understood it—and why Jess would use it. With Sam and Dean, they really did get the best of both worlds.

"Anyway, he was starting to hit on me while my back was turned, but when I turned around and he saw my name tag, he froze in mid-word. Then he gasped 'Winchester?!' and babbled an apology, and then he literally ran screaming."

Dean and Lisa stared at each other. "You think—" Lisa began.

He nodded. "Could be."

Jess looked from one to the other, confused. "Could be what?"

"Some punk made a pass at Lisa at the gym a couple days ago. Backed off when I showed up, and the security guard said he'd take care of it."

Lisa shook her head. "But... even if Frank tased the guy, it wouldn't have traumatized him that badly, would it?"

"Hell if I know. Maybe Frank's a former Marine, too."

After a baffled pause, Jess said, "Well, Lisa, I'm glad Frank's there to look after you."

Lisa nodded slowly. "Me, too."

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><p>Anyone who'd been at the gym that evening would have seen Frank pause in the lobby, lean against a wall, unwrap a lollipop, and stick it in his mouth as he surveyed the scene. They probably would not have seen where the dark-haired man in the trenchcoat came from prior to his striding through the doors and up to Frank.<p>

"Something wrong, little brother?"

"Was it necessary to show him quite so many of the timeline options?"

Frank snorted. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Not quite well enough," Castiel confessed quietly. "He didn't think twice about hitting on Jess before he saw her nametag."

"Hm. Well, if that didn't send him running to a monastery or a police station, I'll drop in on him again, give him a glimpse of Downstairs."

"G—" Castiel caught himself before he could say more.

'Frank' sighed and lowered his voice further. "Castiel, the man's a serial rapist. Some guys are just clueless about no meaning no, but this one never saw a woman he wouldn't force. So far he's terrorized all his victims into silence—the ones that lived, anyway—and he never stays in one place long enough to get caught. Lisa would have been next when either the steroids or the alcohol made him forget that even with one hand missing, Dean could make him die slowly and unpleasantly and then disappear without a trace, to say nothing of what John and Sam would do to him. _And_ she would have lost the baby. Knowing that, what would you have done?"

Castiel looked at him for a moment, then left briefly and returned. "He is drinking and attempting to reason himself out of his fear."

'Frank' cursed under his breath and snapped his fingers. Time froze. Then he placed a hand on Castiel's shoulder and transferred the illusion to him, resuming his vessel's usual appearance as a man in his thirties with light brown hair and light hazel eyes. "This may take a while," he said, guiding Castiel to stand leaning against the wall as he had been. "My shift's over in about half an hour, though. Just make sure you clock out and leave through the back door."

"Are you certain you can sway him?"

"Hellooo, Trickster! All else fails, I'll make sure he turns up on some investigator's doorstep with a note on his shirt and a sprig of holly through his heart."

"Gabriel... why are you doing this?"

"What, the Loki schtick?"

Castiel straightened and stepped toward him. "No. You know what I mean."

Gabriel looked down and scuffed at the floor a little with his shoe. Then he sighed. "Dean died a couple times before they evacuated him."

"I know."

"Well, what you didn't know was that I felt the shockwaves clear in Ohio. The rest of the Host probably did, too. I couldn't think why until I sensed the timeline changing, and then I got a good hard look at the end of the old one before it disappeared."

Castiel waited for Gabriel to say more. When he didn't, Castiel said, "You can't hide yourself from them forever, brother."

Gabriel scoffed and looked up. "Why not?"

"You couldn't from me. And I think Sam suspects."

Gabriel sighed again. "I know, I know. I just... don't think they're ready yet."

"Gabriel..."

"The time will come, okay? Just... let me figure it out."

Castiel sighed, knowing the discussion was over whether he wanted it to be or not. "All right."

Gabriel snapped his fingers, and Castiel found himself leaning against the wall once more as time resumed. But Gabriel himself was gone.


End file.
